by Hammond, Ray
Calypso left Jed in nap mode to recharge his batteries and strolled back towards the pool. This was where Tommy had suffered his accident three months before. So much had happened since then. Now she was living in the great house behind her, sleeping in the bedroom next to him and watching him blossom in front of her eyes: she felt a sense of contentment she had never known before. Because of his special circumstances, she felt that she could allow herself to become much closer to him than she could to another woman’s child. The thing that had most astonished her was the realization that inside this totally isolated, unworldly, unsophisticated and dependent little boy was a remarkable intellect. For example, Tommy wasn’t just musically gifted: he displayed a range of talents way beyond the normal repertoire for a child of his years.
Now he was reading Great Expectations and she saw him flip the page every thirty seconds. At first she had suggested he must be ‘skimming’, but he had solemnly handed his book to her and challenged her to test him on any part already read. His responses had been word-perfect – he had a true photographic memory. Not good, however, she thought. Tommy will heal himself best when he can forget the strangeness of those past lonely and artificial years. During their time together she had been able to carry out a number of standard psychograms and she was now convinced that he had outstanding intellectual potential.
Calypso had grand plans for introducing Tommy properly to the world – even considering inviting other children from the island to stay at the main house. Then, as he got older, he could start to visit the American mainland, perhaps even go to school there. St John’s in Chicago was very good, she’d heard. Or perhaps the Old Suffolk, or Choate in Boston?
The afternoon was unusually sultry. They had swum earlier before collapsing on the sunloungers. The pool was half Olympic size, sunk into the vast south-east lawn beside the house. It was heated by solar power, like almost everything else on Hope Island, and Calypso had persuaded the pool-keeper to reduce its temperature to twenty-two degrees Celsius. They had enjoyed a very energetic game of two-person water polo earlier and the doctor inside Calypso felt sure it was better to have the pool water cool enough to make exercise enjoyable.
She walked across the thick matting now laid around the pool edge, arrived at the deep end and stared down into the crystal-clear water. She glanced across at Tommy: he was still engrossed. Stepping up onto the low springboard, she took a few moments to estimate its length carefully, made three running strides, lifted her hands above her head, and shouted ‘Tommmmyyyyy!’, executing an almost perfect dive with a single, 360-degree full-tuck roll at its apex. As she entered the water she felt her tibia touch as they followed the rest of her vertical body, ramrod straight, into the cool water. She knew it had been a surgical entry; an aquatic incision, almost soundless, certainly without splash.
Calypso levelled out close to the bottom and made three broad breaststrokes, exhaling all the air from her lungs. She swam six more strokes and then gently propelled herself to the surface, halfway along the pool. She shook her head, pushed her hair back, treading water, and looked across at Tommy.
A slim figure was standing beside the boy’s lounger. Where had Tom come from? Father and son waved to her and Calypso waved back, rolling on her back to face the sun. She trolled gently down the pool, wondering whether she absolutely had to climb out and join them. She knew Tom’s presence had to have a purpose: she had never known him to be out in the garden during the day. She hadn’t even known that he was on the island. Despite her closer proximity to her charge, there were still long periods spent with his tutors, and there seemed to be no set pattern of contact with his father.
Reaching the shallow end she swam for the steps. She would have felt more comfortable wearing a slightly less revealing swimsuit, but the one-piece Speedo she wore for her ocean crawls was back at her bungalow.
Calypso raised her arms and hauled herself up the steps, straight into a flurry of enveloping green cotton. As she looked up, Tom was standing there, smiling and holding out the large beach towel she had brought from the house.
She was very aware that her white bikini was just a little too daring for the occasion. It was hardly a string or a thong; it was just, well, a little skimpy. She knew the effect that her breasts and the rest of her body had on men.
As usual Tom was wearing sun-viewpers so she couldn’t see his eyes. But his face was aimed in the right direction, and his smile was very broad indeed. Suddenly self-conscious, she turned her back and let him drape the towel over her shoulders.
‘Beautiful diving, Calypso.’
Folding the towel over her chest, she turned back to face him, pushing the wet hair up off her face.
‘Thanks, Tom. Product of an island childhood.’
He turned and they both began the walk over to Tommy.
‘Couldn’t take any more of the office for a while,’ he explained.
She turned to glance at him. She had never heard him express such a feeling before.
‘So I thought I’d come down and see how you two are doing. Connie told me you were here.’
Calypso nodded. Connie was the anchor: the place where every scrap of executive and domestic information resided before finding its final home. Every one of Tommy’s movements had to be logged in Connie’s scheduler.
‘It’s going to be a hell of a weekend,’ Tom said, changing the subject abruptly. ‘This is where we’ll be entertaining our guests.’
He gestured across the lawn and down towards the three descending terraces that stretched away into the distance in landscaped splendour.
‘The pool and the lakes will be boarded over to serve as catering areas,’ he explained.
Calypso nodded. The staff in the main house had already tripled in size and she had seen teams from the caterers and entertainment providers scouring the grounds for weeks. Tommy was eager, almost desperate, for the Firework Masters to arrive from Sydney. He already knew that he would not be attending the party, but she was planning to watch the fireworks with him from the roof terrace of the mansion itself.
‘How are you going to make it rain in Ethiopia, Tom?’ she enquired.
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘But how, precisely, is the great mensch going to make it rain in Ethiopia? asked Yoav Chelouche. ‘If he makes it rain.’
The senior members of the Operation Iambus team had been called for a meeting with Jan Amethier and Yoave Chelouche in the banker’s office in the UN Secretariat building.
‘We’ll know better when Doctor Larsson and the aerospace team have finished analysing the Phoebus data,’ replied Deakin. ‘But it’s likely to take another few days: there’s so much material. The Tye Corporation is mad keen on recording everything – like every company these days.’
Chelouche nodded. In the absence of the Secretary-General, he was the most senior UN person at the meeting. They now knew that the Tye Corporation had bought much of Eastern Siberia – that news had caused some explosions in the team, not least with expatriate Russians – and it was accepted that the Phoebus technology was somehow intended to change the climate there. Thanks to Joe Tinkler they had also learned of other newly purchased territories in the Baltic Sea and in Canada.
‘What do the weather people say?’ asked the banker.
‘They can’t even give me an estimate of how much energy might be needed,’ said Deakin. ‘Current technologies are merely a pinprick compared to nature’s force. They claim even the American military can’t change the weather pattern without resorting to nuclear weapons.’
‘So do we have to presume he’s using some form of orbiting nuclear energy?’ asked Amethier quietly.
‘I very much doubt it,’ argued Deakin. ‘Tye maintains a strongly anti-nuclear stance and I don’t think he could sell the idea to his shareholders.’
Chelouche gave a big shrug, as if doubting that would rule it out.
‘So let’s move on to the legal status,’ suggested Chelouche. ‘What have we got?’ He turned
to Martha Rose, senior adviser on international law.
‘We’ve now identified over three thousand separate cases of intellectual-property theft by either the Tye Corporation itself or one of its many subsidiaries,’ the attorney told them. ‘There is hard evidence on each count, but it is debatable whether an international court would allow us to enter the evidence we have obtained. It was, after all, stolen and illegally decrypted.’
There was a silence as they digested the implications. It took Chelouche to break it.
‘All laws are made by men – and women,’ he hastened to add, ‘and all systems and structures we have are, in the end, political. That means they are decided by people, not by some distinct and invisible hand, however much we sell that notion to our populations. The International Criminal Court of The Hague is independent, of course, but it is independent by the support of the entire international community, not despite it. I am no lawyer myself, but I am forced to be something of a politician. I think we must recommend that we prepare for immediate prosecution.’
Deakin held up his hand. ‘What about economic stability, Doctor? You’re the one who convinced us that we must protect the markets above all.’
The banker nodded and stroked his jowls. ‘It hadn’t slipped my mind, Exec Deakin,’ he growled. ‘I’m now in a position, potentially, to take over this corporation – temporarily, at least. The investment community will accept the World Bank as a trustworthy guardian – legally, a parens patriae – for the shareholders.’
Deakin whistled soundlessly. He nodded his understanding, his appreciation of the capital involved and the amount of work that must have already been done.
‘There’s still the issue of public opinion, Doctor,’ he objected quietly as he imagined the global TV coverage any trial of Thomas Tye would receive on the networks. ‘The public will be voting by their billions, on the hour, every hour, throughout the trial. Every minute we’ll be watching how the world’s population regard this man – as innocent or guilty. It matters not a jot what the judging panel may say. At the end of the case, if over sixty per cent of the public think he’s innocent, we can’t go against that opinion and expect still to gain the support of our member states. In democracies national leaders would then be forced to announce their support for Thomas Tye in order to protect their own political position. And, as Tye’s a serving Head of State, a prosecution would have implications for other leaders of non-democratic states. We’d risk the UN coming apart. Our public opinion people say that Tye’s stock has never been higher – in both senses. None of us can just go against the will of the world’s people these days. That, in the end, is the reality of our new people’s democracy.’
‘That depends on what the man’s doing, Head of State or not, Exec Deakin,’ responded Chelouche tartly. ‘And it looks to me as if the Tye Corporation is getting seriously out of hand. I’m going to recommend to Alex–’ they all registered this pointed use of the Secretary-General’s first name ‘–that we set our legal team on preparing a specimen case. Get them to look for one with an appealing human angle. You’re right, of course: this will have to play well with the people.’
*
‘Try this, it’s beautifully made,’ said Felicity flipping the trouser suit over on its hanger. ‘Look at the lining.’
Haley had decided to treat herself for the Hope Island party, so she and her sister had booked a day’s shopping at one of the new themed retail resorts near Gatwick Airport. They had checked in soon after nine a.m. and had established their base in their personal Day Room before venturing out into 148 acres of enclosed semi-tropical jungle, simulated cityscapes, waterside dining areas and entertainment complexes. Dotted among the palms, lakes, waterfalls and rustic-cobbled city streets were designer boutiques, delicatessens, coffee shops, bookstores, luxury goods stores, hair stylists, beauty salons, wine bars and ‘outdoor’ eating areas serving a vast range of fine food and informal, freshly cooked delicacies. Minute hummingbirds, genetically modified to shed their excreta percutaneously and hygienically, filled the air with darting flashes of vivid colour. Wading birds, similarly adjusted, decorated the watersides. As the shopping vacationers moved from area to area, the temperature of their environment altered with the type of location, and concealed ScentSims filled the air with the latest and most exclusive environmental fragrances.
Like most professionals, Haley did nearly all her routine shopping on the networks. Her personal shopping agent had created a 3D mannequin of her UK size eight body, a virtual tailor’s dummy, precisely to her own physical measurements, that made trying on virtual representations of clothes a precise science. Not only could she see how well a garment fitted her, she could also see it in a huge variety of colours and coordinates and even in different settings. Many on-line suppliers had abandoned manufacturing ready-to-wear garments and had returned to offering clothes tailored individually for every customer.
Another advantage of network shopping was that purchasers could see how a garment looked from all angles. The problem of metamerism – of a colour appearing different under varying light sources – had been finally solved and today Haley could be sure that the colours seen on her display were accurate. This ensured that the pillar-box red garment she saw on her screen would appear equally vibrant when the garment itself was delivered by the courier. The ‘two-hour guaranteed’ courier services and a ‘no questions’ exchange or refund policy on non-tailored garments had also boosted the virtual retail trade after it was discovered that twice as many people would make impulse purchases if they could be sure of receiving them shortly after making their decision.
But Haley had to admit that network shopping wasn’t as much fun as being here in person. It was a great luxury to wander amongst actual clothes racks, to feel and smell the shopping experience. Since themed Retail Resorts had started offering overnight accommodation and leisure facilities such as casinos, swimming pools, golf courses and tennis courts, such shopping vacations had taken over as the premier holiday destination in North America, Japan, Britain and parts of Europe. They also now catered for day-visitors, like Haley and Felicity. Having a personal Day Room as their base and the facility to bundle all shopping and recreational spending together in a single payment made at checking-out time had turned an experience once a High Street nightmare into a truly sybaritic sojourn.
And, of course, spending time at a Retail Resort was a great opportunity to catch up with family and friends. Since her sister had collected her from Battersea, Haley had talked about little else but Jack Hendriksen. Before he left he had assured her that all covert personal surveillance of her by the UN International Security Agency would be lifted and she had taken him at his word. Things between them had become so momentous that she only had two choices: to trust him wholly, or to absolutely reject him and everything connected with him. She had now made her choice and contacted Marsello Furtrado. With a show of wariness and reluctance, she had agreed to the deal he offered.
‘What do you think Jack would like to see you in?’ asked Felicity innocently.
Haley playfully struck her twin on the upper arm. All right: so she had been talking about nothing else.
‘I’m not buying this for Jack,’ objected Haley ‘I want something to make me look like a world-famous biographer.’
They both laughed and Felicity held up the suit again. Haley took it from her: black with a single button where the deeply cut jacket lapels met, straight trousers with a delightful wrap-over waist. She would try it on.
When Jack had first kissed her it seemed as if everything in the world had stopped: as though she was stationary and the world and all its people were spinning around her. They had kissed until they had to break off, breathless. Then Jack had fished in his pocket for a short plastic device.
‘We’re alone now,’ he said as he pressed a button. ‘This will jam all signals. I’m sorry, but you’ve been kept under surveillance since long before I met you.’
Suddenly all the wonderful h
ot emotions flowing up inside her were met by an icy down draught of some horrible reality that threatened to wreck everything.
Sitting her down at the table in her kitchen, he had held both her hands tightly while he had told her more about the United Nations and his role with the agency.
Then he had hesitated, staring down at the table surface.
‘I am in love with you, Haley,’ he declared at last. ‘I have only ever been in love once before – with my wife. I am thirty-eight years old, so I know what real love feels like compared to any other feelings when we meet someone we’re merely attracted to.’
She had nodded, tears welling in her eyes. ‘I’ve never felt like this before, Jack,’ she told him. ‘I just have to think about it for a while.’
He had not stayed the night. But it had been agreed that he would return the following morning and they would spend the day together.
Human sleep is a safety precaution made necessary by the planet’s axial rotation and the random branching of the evolutionary bush which, in Homo erectus, elevated vision to become the supreme sense. Thus, when darkness fell and vision’s sensory advantage was neutralized, the proto-humans managing to cling on to their nasty, brutish and short lives long enough to reproduce were those who wisely retired during the absence of light. Modern human brains use part of this inherited and seemingly wasteful lack of consciousness to process information and to learn. That night, in her dream-filled REM sleep, Haley learned that she did, indeed, love Jack Hendriksen.
She woke with a smile, his face filling her mind. She turned to the pillow beside her and imagined his face there. She gathered her duvet between her legs and imagined it was him: the process of automorphic projection had begun. She laughed and whooped out of bed to see her reflection grinning back like an idiot from her bathroom mirror.